This invention relates to a clothes dryer of the dehumidification type, and more particularly to such a clothes dryer wherein a neurocontrol is provided for controlling the operation thereof for improvement of the drying efficiency.
Clothes dryers of the dehumidification type are well known in the art. In this type of clothes dryers, hot air induced by a heater is circulated from a drying compartment containing clothes to be dried, through a heat exchanger so that moisture is removed by the heat exchanger from the clothes, thereby drying the clothes.
In the above-described conventional clothes dryer, however, the heater is arranged to start inducing heat immediately when clothes to be dried are contained in a drying compartment and the operation of the dryer is initiated. Supply of cooling air to the heat exchanger is simultaneously initiated. The temperature of the hot air induced by the heater is not so high at an initial drying stage that moisture cannot be sufficiently exhaled from the clothes. In this condition, the hot air from the drying compartment reaches the heat exchanger in which the hot air is cooled by the cooling air supplied to the heat exchanger. The temperature of the hot air is thus prevented from being raised, which delays heating to the clothes. Consequently, a drying period is prolonged.
When the clothes dryer is used almost everyday, the value of temperature required for the drying operation depends upon a volume of clothes to be dried, the degree of wetness of the clothes, a volume of cooling air supplied to the heat exchanger, and the heating value of the heating. Accordingly, the atmospheric temperature in the drying compartment tends to be increased when the volume of the clothes is small or the degree of wetness of the clothes is low while the atmospheric temperature in the drying compartment tends to be decreased when the volume of the clothes is large or the degree of wetness of the clothes is high. Consequently, modes of the drying operation are changed depending upon the inner condition of the drying compartment and the atmospheric temperature in the dying compartment becomes extremely high or low.
Furthermore, since the clothes become almost moistureless at a final stage of the drying operation, the atmospheric temperature in the drying compartment is rapidly increased. In such a condition, the heat exchanger functions only to cool most of the heat generated by the heater.
The heat efficiency is low throughout the drying operation in the conventional clothes dryer of the dehumidification type. Consequently, drying clothes is time-consuming and the electric charges are increased.